Blogroll

August 12, 2017

George Psalmanazar and the "Formosan" language

George Psalmanazer arrived in Britain in 1703, and soon became the rage of London – everyone who was anyone wanted him as a guest at their dinner table. Psalmanazar said he was from Formosa (present-day Taiwan) and that he had been converted to Anglican Christianity. He knew Latin well and could discuss the finer points of theology with erudite clergymen. The following year Psalmanazar wrote a book, An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa, which quickly went through two editions. So popular was it that it was translated into French, Dutch and German. In the book Psalmanazar described the supposed customs and traditions of Formosa (which included the worship of idols and the sacrifice of children, so he said), and the island’s language and alphabet.

The only thing was, Psalmanazar was a complete fraud. George Psalmanazar was not his real name and the book was a work of fiction. No-one has ever discovered Psalmanazar’s real name or his nationality (it’s thought he was French). Anything we do know about him is what he told everyone himself in his autobiography, written towards the end of his life.

It beggars belief these days that anyone should have taken Psalmanazar seriously. For one thing, he didn’t look the remotest bit Formosan – he had blond hair and fair skin (see his picture on his Wikipedia page). However, he had such audacity and panache that he managed to skilfully field all awkward questions. He was from the aristocracy, he said, and the aristocracy lived underground in the interior of the island, surrounded by wealth and riches and in completely different circumstances from the impoverished people Western missionaries had encountered in the coastal regions.

No-one unmasked him for a while, although people were occasionally suspicious of his story. He was questioned by Edmond Halley of the Royal Society, who asked him probing questions about the length of shadows on Formosa, and how long twilight lasted. The eminent astronomer must surely have rumbled the impostor. But if Halley did, he did not let on.

Some aspects of Psalmanazar caused people to challenge his story (his knowing Latin and Greek, for instance), but Psalmanazar was never challenged on the alphabet and language he invented – it was logical, consistent and planned out in great detail. From a modern perspective, the language is too regular to be genuine, and it is clearly based on Latin, but people’s knowledge at the time was insufficient to tell the difference between a real and a fake language. The alphabet contained 20 letters, and the language was written from right to left. Psalmanazar translated the Ten Commandments, Lord’s Prayer and other religious texts into “Formosan”, and wrote a grammar of the language. Psalmanazar’s Wikipedia page has examples.

For more on the fascinating character, George Psalmanazar, see Wikipedia, or this site.